Short answer: no, nobody in these videos is genuinely sticking to a ceiling. It's an illusion, and depending on which version you're watching, it's created one of two very different ways.
The camera-trick version
In the practical, filmed-for-real version, the creator is actually on the floor (or close to it) the entire time. By shooting from a low angle and later rotating the footage in editing, a wall or the floor itself can be made to read as a ceiling once the video is flipped. Nobody ever leaves the ground.
The AI-generated version
The other, increasingly common version skips filming altogether. A single photo of a person standing normally is fed into an AI video model, which generates an entirely new animated sequence — reaching up, sticking to the ceiling, hanging, sitting, and dropping back down — frame by frame. Nothing about it is a recorded stunt at all; it's synthetic video built from one still image.
How to tell which is which
Practical camera-trick versions often have small tells: shadows that fall in a slightly unnatural direction, or camera movement that doesn't quite match a truly fixed shot. AI-generated versions tend to have a smoother, more "generated" quality on close inspection, and are usually filmed (or rather, rendered) as a perfectly locked-off, unmoving shot from start to finish.
Why it still feels convincing
Illusions like this work because our brains are quick to accept a familiar space and a fixed camera as "real" — the surprise of the impossible movement does the rest of the work, and most viewers aren't scrutinizing shadows frame by frame on a five-second clip.
Should that change how you enjoy it?
Not really — the trend was never meant to convince anyone that real stunts were involved. Like most viral video formats, it's understood as a fun illusion rather than a claim of an actual physical feat, and that's exactly what makes it fun to try yourself.
